Hamilton. — Notes on a Visit to Macquarie Island. 571 



absence for a swim, he and his friends were generally within 

 a very short distance of the house, and always spent the 

 night there. I took one of the large brown young birds, 

 nearly as large as an adult, from the middle of the breeding- 

 ground, and carried it down to the beach, and let it loose 

 amongst the bachelors and the "unemployed." Directly I put 

 it on the ground it set up its cry of distress — a very shrill 

 whistle, quite unlike the hoarse croak of the adult. It was 

 set upon at once by all the birds in the neighbourhood, and 

 thrashed and driven up the beach towards its proper quarters. 

 If it went in any way out of the direct line half a dozen birds 

 would make a furious rush to turn it into the right path, and 

 they only left it when it regained the rookery and vanished in 

 the crowd. 



Nearly the whole of the Lusitania beach, over half a mile 

 in length, is occupied by king penguins ; but a small colony of 

 royal penguins were camped at one part, moulting, probably 

 crowded out of some other beach. These birds have thick, 

 powerful beaks, and they varied their existence by most 

 desperate duels for the most trivial causes, striking each other 

 about the head till the blood flowed freely. These birds are 

 much smaller than the kings, but have an attractive crest of 

 yellow feathers when in good plumage. 



Sailing about overhead were numbers of the dark-coloured 

 hawk-like skua gull — Lestris antarctica (Stercorarius antarc- 

 ticus) — the terror of all other birds. The working party find 

 them so destructive to the young penguins that, by means of 

 poison, a very large number have been killed to protect the oil 

 interest. They are still extremely numerous. I did not, 

 however, find them so bold as some have reported them. Not 

 being their breeding-season may have made the difference. 



A little to the southward of the Lusitania beach is a 

 breeding-place of the victoria penguin (E. filholi), and the air 

 was filled with the flying feathers and down from the moulting 

 birds. These little birds are very active, and climb up and 

 down the face of the cliffs in a most agile manner, and are 

 much more entitled to the name " rock-hopper " than the other 

 species (Pygoscelis tceniata), which are much less plentiful and 

 more lumbering in their gait. 



There are four kinds of penguins on the island. The king 

 penguins (Aptenody tes) do not make any attempt at a nest ; 

 the royal penguins (Eudyptes schlegeli) carry up stones or 

 bones from the beach to a convenient place amongst the grass 

 for their nests ; the victorias (Eudyptes filholi) pluck grass 

 and form a rough nest ; the rock-hoppers (Pygoscelis) do the 

 same, generally on the slope of a cliff. The kings lay their 

 eggs from December to February or March ; the royals lay 

 in September, and also the rock-hoppers ; the victorias in 



